Born to Dance Ebsen, Buddy performer Powell, Eleanor performer Film 1936-11-23 MGM MGM. Dance Ensemble numbers staged by Dave Gould. Music/lyrics: Cole Porter. Eleanor Powell, as the sole choreographer of her performance, appears as the talented dancer Nora Paige, James Stewart as the sailor Ted Barker. The plot is a complicated romance between and dancer and a sailor. Buddy Ebsen is "Mush Trolly"a sailor buddy of Stewart who finds his talent as a dancer. This is the first time that Powell is billed above the title on screen, with the movie trailer billing her as the "World's Queen o' Taps." A sailor on leave in NY falls for a struggling dancer. Powell is at her tap dancing peak; James Stewart appears in one of his earliest screen roles, singing and tap dancing! The film received two Academy Award nominations: one for Best Dance Direction; another for Best Song: "I've Got You Under My Skin" which is played out in a ballroom dance by Georges and Jalna, and by female lead "star" Lucy Wood (Virginia Bruce). The 16 minute finale one of the largest musical sets ever built. Several wonderful musical numbers: 1. "Rap-tap On Wood" inserts the fastest of rhythm breaks as Powell's own accompaniment, her own call and response (nobody can do it for her, very independent); she taps as a male chorus play tin whistles; she wears laced-shoes, white with heels; dances paddle and rolls in double time and turns. 2. "I'm Nuts About You" in 3/4 time waltz clog merry go-round is first Powell and Stewart's duet and is then taken up by Ebsen who adds rubberlegging, slides and eccentric moves to his taps. In the end of the song even Stewart looks good singing and dancing, there are six singers and dancers by the end of the song. This number proves that everybody in Hollywood during this period had to be able to sing and tap dance. 3. "Easy To Love" a singing duet for Powell and Stewart in which she is the one who breaks off into dance: roundhouse kicks to the nose, triple turns, kicks-and-a-backbend is Powell's signature (to Nicholas Brothers down-and-up splits); double time. 4. "Easy to Love" Ebsen reprises the tune with an awkward reprise, fills in the spaces of the tune with awkward soft-shoe riffs; a sweetly awkward soft-shoe very expressive of his oddball personality. 5. Finale: "Swinging the Jinx Away" Lucy James in a new musical comedy, "Great Guns": of course James cannot do the role so Powell has to step in for her. Begins with a big chorus, acrobatics, then Ebsen, singing a beautiful line: "Look at the prisoners of Alcatraz/ They're doing time but the time is jazz" and accelerates steps into corny eccentric moves. Then Powell struts with little heel kicks and more strutting, she begins low and downplays, begins with one single little phrase and accelerates and develops it a an extraordinary musical tap number: musically, the number builds with the help of a chorus line of men playing trombones, continued with saxophones, and then trumpets players . Then she is flanked by tubas. She does a move where she lifts her leg so that the toe is head high (and leaves it there) and then as it's up there she stretches in the opposite direction with a back bend, the bottom of the line she accentuates with a heel tap on her supporting leg. Then she continues to build with chaine turns. Now she is flanked with a marching band (or drummers); she swings it. She finishes off traveling in straight vertical line directly into the eye off the camera doing twenty-pull turns with an ending somersault and salute. Ann Kilkelly in her "Feminine Flash" Tap Talks/ Tap Films (July 10, 2007) describes Powell in this number as "flashing." Performing Arts Encyclopedia http://www.loc.gov/performingarts Frank, Rusty E.: Tap! The Greatest Tap Dance Stars and their Stories 1900-1955. New York, William Morrow. (1990). Smith, Ernie: Selected List of Films and Kinescopes. In Jean and Marshall Stearns' Jazz Dance (1968). Tap Dance America http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/tda/tda-home.html Eleanor Powell (biography) loc.music.tdabio.152 Buddy Ebsen (biography) loc.music.tdabio.82 tda IHAS 151216 loc.music.tda.474